Thursday, October 15, 2009

My Family and Other Emperors

Here's how my family descends from Charlemagne. The last people on the list are my maternal grandparents. I think the data is accurate but I look forward to any corrections or comments.

UPDATE: I'm almost certainly NOT related to Charlemagne in the lineage shown below. Link #34 is wrong. The father of Ruhama Hill is NOT William Hill of Fairfield, Connecticut but Captain John Hill of Westerley, Rhode Island.

UPDATE (Jan. 2015): An informed read has pointed out that Julianne FiztMaurice (#18) is the daughter of Maurice FitzMaurice and his first wife, Matilda de Predergast, and not his second wife Emmiline de Longspree (#17) as I've shown.

Let me see, you get half your genes from your father and half from you mother. After 40 generations you have 2^(-40) of the genes from the first generation. There's not that many genes in the human genome. So, you probably have zero Charlemagne genes in your genome.

Charlemagne was Charles the Great. Charles Martel was Charles the Hammer, his grandfather.

I understand your point. The name "Martel" (meaning "hammer") was conferred on the victor of the Battle of Tours.

Charlemagne was not born "Charles the Great" but he probably wasn't known as "Charles Martel" either. (He was named after his grandfather.) The last name "Martel" is just a convenient way for genealogists to identify families at at time when surnames were not popular.

Let me see, you get half your genes from your father and half from you mother. After 40 generations you have 2^(-40) of the genes from the first generation. There's not that many genes in the human genome. So, you probably have zero Charlemagne genes in your genome.

That's correct, and it's even correct if you consider all possible alleles—not just the ones found in "genes."

But it does raise an interesting point. What you say is true of each and every one of your ancestors living at the time of Charlemagne. There's an extremely low probability that you got any of your current alleles from any of those ancestors.

Since we clearly must have gotten our alleles from somewhere, how do we resolve this apparent paradox?

After some more thought, there might have been inbreeding in the generations following Charlemagne. My 2^(-40) number assumed independent genetic coupling. If two tenth generation descendants of Charlemagne had an offspring, that offspring would have the same number of Charlemagne alleles as the parents.

The apparent paradox is resolved by noting that there are 2^(40) ancestors. Half came from 2 ancestors, 1/4 from 4 ancestors, and so forth. So the probability that any particular allele came from a particular ancestor is small, the probability that it came from any ancestor will be sum up to one.

If you don't mind my asking, is there a specific way for a person to determine their link to Charlemagne? I've been tracing my family tree for over a decade, and I still can't find anything but labourers and fishermen with no ties to nobility at all (but I guess it doesn't help that I get stuck at around 1800 in so many branches of my family tree).

Genealogy Girl, keep trying. Eventually you'll find a connection to the known lineages of European nobility and then to Charlemagne.

As long as you have some Europeans in your past it's almost certain that you are a descendant of Charlemagne. Of course, you are also a descendant of everyone else who lived in 800 AD but that's not nearly so interesting. :-)

A big problem with this descent is that Andrew Ward (1597-1659),has no proven ancestry.See for example, Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, vol. 3, which mentions proposed parentage for Andrew, but notices that nothing has been proved.If Andrew Ward had a documented royal descent, it would be included in Gary Roberts, Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants, and also Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry.

What is the specific evidence that proves the parentage of Andrew Ward?

And where is a published discussion of that evidence?

If there is no good answer to these questions, then there is no reason to believe in the supposed gentry ancestry given for Andrew Ward.

I'm just an amateur looking into my own genealogy. It's difficult to sort fact from fiction since there's a lot of misinformation out there, especially on Ancestry.com.

I try whenever possible to confirm lineages because I know its all too easy to postulate a link to the upper classes in Europe.

In the case of Andrew Ward I relied on information published by The New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. Their information seems quite reliable and their conclusions fit with the facts. There's no question that Andrew Ward, the immigrant, was well-connected with the gentry so it's reasonable that he descends from someone of note.

The speculation is that he is the son of the fourth son of Richard of Homersfield. The fourth son did not inherit much and it's likely that his son, Andrew the immigrant, was not terribly wealthy.

I've lost interest in the Wards since they aren't ancestors of mine. If you are interested in tracking down the truth about Andrew Ward's ancestors I suggest you blog about it and start a discussion.

Here's the problem. Professional genealogists seem reluctant to jump into popular genealogy to correct misconceptions and promote good practice. In some cases this is understandable since they don't want to be giving away information for free. But popular genealogy is becoming increasingly detached from historical facts and the more false information is propagated, the more it becomes accepted as "true."

In the long run, that will hurt the profession so they better act now to do something or they will be (unjustly) marginalized and ignored.

I understand your point. The name "Martel" (meaning "hammer") was conferred on the victor of the Battle of Tours.

Charlemagne was not born "Charles the Great" but he probably wasn't known as "Charles Martel" either. (He was named after his grandfather.) The last name "Martel" is just a convenient way for genealogists to identify families at at time when surnames were not popular.

Sorry if this confused anyone.

Actually, the issue is not understanding a point but correcting an obvious mistake still holding in the initial post (I suppose you are still able to edit it). Nobody in France or Germany would confound Charlemagne/Karl der Grosse (i.e. "Charles the Great") with his grandfather Charles Martel (who obviously got his nickname for having "hammered" the Muslim army at Poitiers (Tours) and ended the Muslim advance in Europe), so the name "Martel" should simply deleted from the line "Charlemagne (Charles) Martel King of the Franks". The future Roman Emperor Charles the Great got his grandfather's name (Charles) because of the commonplace tradition naming after some close parents (see e.g. his first son, Carloman which had the name of his greatuncle - the brother of Pepin le Bref, but also the name of the younger brother of Charlemagne); there should be no "probably" in the phrase concerning how was known Charles the Great (before becoming Great): it was simply, Charles, the son of Pepin le Bref and Bertrada of Laon. The surname "Martel" is not the common way to identify its' family; actually the Dynasty founded by him is known as "Carolingian" (keeping in mind that the first Carolingian King of the Franks is neither Charles Martel nor Charlemagne but Pepin le Bref). As King of the Franks, Charlemagne is usually labeled Charles I, not with his nick. There is no reason to keep the name "Martel" displayed in this post since neither the one and only Charles Martel appears in the genealogy, nor his dynasty has ever been labeled "Martel".

I should add that I've retained "Martel" in my database in spite of the fact that I know the correct names and the history. The reason is purely pragmatic; surnames are important in keeping track of genealogy records since one often needs to search one's database for duplicate entries. It's really hard to keep track of people before surnames became common so it's often convenient to attach a pseudonym. I should have corrected this when I posted.

Larry,Can I assume that you are related up to Andrew Ward and that you have proven you line to Andrew? I am related to Andrew via Hester and my Sherman line.My reason for asking is that I would like to tell my grandchildren about the connection toCharlemagne as I don't, at my age, have time to do the research.Thanks for your comments.J

Laurence A. Moran

Larry Moran is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto. You can contact him by looking up his email address on the University of Toronto website.

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Quotations

The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows.Charles Darwin (c1880)Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory.

Charles Darwin (1859)Science reveals where religion conceals. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation...

Quotations

The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake.
Stephen Jay Gould (1982)
I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory.
Stephen Jay Gould (2002) p.1339
The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. It supplies raw material only. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1977)
Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories—and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.
Stephen Jay Gould (1980)
Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change.
Stephen Jay Gould (1983) p.335
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"—operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat.
Stephen Jay Gould (1999) p.84

Quotations

My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace.

Jerry Coyne
Why Evolution Is TrueI once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back.

Sydney Brenner
TIBS Dec. 2000
It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct.... Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations

Douglas Futuyma
One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist.

Francis Crick
There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. There will be luddites. But they will be buried.

Sydney Brenner
An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: 'I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one.' I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist

Richard Dawkins
Another curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understand it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even less as we now may be able to understand it in biology.

Jacques Monod
The false view of evolution as a process of global optimizing has been applied literally by engineers who, taken in by a mistaken metaphor, have attempted to find globally optimal solutions to design problems by writing programs that model evolution by natural selection.